Auditory development between 7 and 11 years: an event-related potential (ERP) study.

<h4>Background</h4>There is considerable uncertainty about the time-course of central auditory maturation. On some indices, children appear to have adult-like competence by school age, whereas for other measures development follows a protracted course.<h4>Methodology</h4>We s...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Dorothy V M Bishop, Mike Anderson, Corinne Reid, Allison M Fox
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2011-05-01
Series:PLoS ONE
Online Access:https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0018993&type=printable
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Summary:<h4>Background</h4>There is considerable uncertainty about the time-course of central auditory maturation. On some indices, children appear to have adult-like competence by school age, whereas for other measures development follows a protracted course.<h4>Methodology</h4>We studied auditory development using auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by tones in 105 children on two occasions two years apart. Just over half of the children were 7 years initially and 9 years at follow-up, whereas the remainder were 9 years initially and 11 years at follow-up. We used conventional analysis of peaks in the auditory ERP, independent component analysis, and time-frequency analysis.<h4>Principal findings</h4>We demonstrated maturational changes in the auditory ERP between 7 and 11 years, both using conventional peak measurements, and time-frequency analysis. The developmental trajectory was different for temporal vs. fronto-central electrode sites. Temporal electrode sites showed strong lateralisation of responses and no increase of low-frequency phase-resetting with age, whereas responses recorded from fronto-central electrode sites were not lateralised and showed progressive change with age. Fronto-central vs. temporal electrode sites also mapped onto independent components with differently oriented dipole sources in auditory cortex. A global measure of waveform shape proved to be the most effective method for distinguishing age bands.<h4>Conclusions/significance</h4>The results supported the idea that different cortical regions mature at different rates. The ICC measure is proposed as the best measure of 'auditory ERP age'.
ISSN:1932-6203